Deliverance
by Juulna
Summary: Bucky was alive, apparently. At least according to Loki-Cap, or whoever the hell it had been. But Steve hadn't believed him, hadn't wanted to, and so had kept quiet, for fear he was just being fucked with. For fear he was going insane, that the stress had finally broken him. / [Set in the alternate 2012 Avengers timeline. Stuckony. Eventual M.]
1. Chapter 1

**Note: "Deliverance: the action of being rescued or set free."**

**AO3 tags: ****Irondad, ****Kid Fic, ****Mind Control, Aftermath & Recovery, ****Angst with a Happy Ending, ****Angst and Hurt/Comfort, ****Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), ****Alternate Timelines, ****The alternate timeline after Endgame wreaked havoc on 2012, ****But the Infinity Stones haven't been returned, ****Alternate 2012 timeline, ****Getting Together, ****Eventual Romance, ****Eventual Smut, ****Friends to Lovers, ****Plot, ****Assassination Plot(s), ****Pre-HYDRA Reveal, ****Whose kid is this anyway?, ****And why does Hydra want her?, ****Protective Steve Rogers, ****Protective Tony Stark, ****Slow Burn, ****Seriously slow burn but a lot quicker than Cross is lol, ****Team as Family, ****Avengers Family, ****Bucky Barnes Recovering, ****POV Tony Stark, ****Accidental Baby Acquisition, ****This will be rated T to M for most of it until later**

* * *

They'd gotten the call early that morning, when most of them hadn't even been awake yet.

It was only their fifth _unplanned_ time out as Avengers in the wake of the Chitauri Invasion, four months past. Most of their time had been devoted to cleanup and meetings—endless meetings, about what _exactly_ had gone down immediately after Loki had been captured, but _no one_ knew, not really—but they had been out on a few planned missions at SHIELD's urging.

Most in an attempt to find Loki's scepter and the Tesseract.

_Definitely_ one of those types of things you don't just misplace.

So SHIELD had been scrambling in the wake of losing not one, but _two_ powerful, alien artifacts, and the Avengers had agreed to take point on any missions to retrieve them. In some ways… well, in a lot of ways, they felt at fault for letting them get taken, lost, whatever the hell had happened—no one was entirely _sure_—and that went double for Steve.

Tony had had many a conversation with Steve about exactly that. Some cordial, some not, but all had left him with a sinking feeling that something wasn't right with the man. That there was something… eating him up from the inside, beyond being a man out of time, a man in a new century, a man depressed.

Which he most _certainly_ was.

But there was something… else.

So Tony had set himself to watching the security feeds from that day, over and over again, beyond the hundreds of times they had done it as a team, or with SHIELD, trying to deconstruct what exactly had happened that day. Many of the cameras had been destroyed, at least the ones closest to the action, but there had been just enough left for Tony to realize that Steve had come out of his fight with the other Cap—who they assumed was Loki, spelled, but who the hell knew anymore, Tony sure as hell didn't—with the expression of one who'd had their heart scooped out with a rusty spoon.

It was heartbreaking.

But Tony wasn't one to back down when there was something needing fixing, much as he probably _should_ in some cases.

Steve had held out for three days of Tony's constant barrage of prying nosiness before breaking down then and there in the kitchen, telling Tony everything that had gone on in the wake of Loki's capture. _Everything_.

Bucky was alive, apparently. At least according to Loki-Cap, or whoever the hell it had been. But Steve hadn't believed him, hadn't _wanted_ to, and so had kept quiet, for fear he was just being fucked with. For fear he was going insane, that the stress had finally broken him.

Tony had blinked once, twice, and then practically thrown Steve into a car and drove him to the old mansion on Fifth Avenue himself, where all of Howard's old things were—including, because of course it did, all of the research on the Valkyrie's possible final resting spot… and the fewer, but still sizable, missions which had been undertaken in an attempt to retrieve James Buchanan Barnes' body from the Alpine ravine where it had fallen.

The last three months had seen an expansion of said project, but Steve had pleaded with him to keep it between him and Tony alone. Other than JARVIS, that's the way it was kept, and they had steadily fed any information they could into the program Tony had created just for this.

Just for Steve. Steve and Bucky, if he were alive. Or even if not, even if Whatever-Cap had been lying to This-Cap, _Tony's_ Cap, then at least they could bring some measure of closure to a dead man, said man's living relatives that Steve was avoiding like the plague, and to Steve himself.

Tony and Steve had fallen asleep in the library doing just that, only hours before the alarm had blared, notifying them of unusual spikes in radiation that the satellites were picking up on. Radiation that matched what they knew of Loki's scepter and the Tesseract.

It was the fifth time called out, and they were able to refine the detection algorithms to be more and more precise with each one of them. Twice they'd uncovered illegal nuclear sites—_those_ had been a nightmare of government red tape and political repercussions—and twice more they had uncovered barely-evacuated labs, self-destructed and still smoldering.

_Something_ was up. Something hinky as fuck. None of them liked it, so the Avengers had started keeping things close to the chest, letting fewer and fewer people know what they were up to, because surely there was no way that they weren't being monitored in _some_ fashion or other.

This time… _this time_, however, they'd told no one, stealthed the quinjet, and got either lucky _or_ their suspicions were correct—because there were still people left to fight. It was a small base, hidden in an old, abandoned missile site from the days of the Cold War, and it had dozens of floors leading deep into the ground, with only about a third of them occupied.

Bruce and Thor were set to guard the top after the six of them had made quick—and rather brutal—work of the initial defenses, and he, Steve, Clint, and Nat had started to make their way through the rest of the facility.

Thankfully, they had the advantage of surprise on their side, and the couple dozen guards had nowhere to run, and no backup to call for with JARVIS and Tony jamming every signal they could in the area.

"Check the database here, Widow. Hawkeye, watch her six and the ones we rounded up on this—" Steve started, and then cut himself off with an abnormal shocked sound as the five scientists they'd been standing over fell to their sides, convulsing and frothing at the mouth.

"What the hell?" Clint said.

"Cyanide," Steve said, and the expression on his face matched the dark tone of his words. "Fake teeth with cyanide pills in them," he added. "Hydra used to—god damn it!" he let out, his face shutting down everything he was feeling from Tony's eyes. Before Tony could ask any further questions, Steve was out the door and racing down another level, faster than even Tony's suit could track, shouting, "Nat! I need into those servers _yesterday_. Tony, prevent this place from blowing. Clint, with me. _Now_."

No one even _tried_ to tease Cap about not using their call signs, _let alone the swearing_—not if what Tony was starting to suspect was true.

One look at Clint and Nat's faces told him that they thought the same thing. Whether it was _true_ or not was up for grabs, but from where he was standing, it was looking mighty fucking fucked up.

Nat stepped over the sprawled-out dead bodies between her and the console she'd previously been aiming for, and started cooly informing Bruce and Thor that they were alright down here—but their… hosts were _not_—and Tony snapped himself out of it. He had a job to do, especially if he wanted to assist Nat in figuring out what the hell these people were hiding.

Also, not blowing up sounded rather nice.

Tony let the fingers of his suit draw back partially as he walked towards the bank of servers in the corner of the room, absently making a note to himself that he really needed to make fully retractable gloves, and then pulled his helmet clear off of his head so that he could connect one of the internal wires into the USB port on the serverbank's console. Within moments he had JARVIS running in the background even as his own fingers flew across the keyboard, eyes darting from side to side as he pulled up line after line of code and programs.

"Fucking hell," he muttered to himself as numbers flashed up onto the screen.

Nat glanced his way and quirked one brow, still typing without looking at the keyboard.

"Five minute timer. Get what you can, in case we gotta hightail it out of here," he explained, turning his attention back to the task.

There was nothing else that gave it away—no flashing red lights, no blaring horn, no countdown on the various screens around the room. If Tony hadn't already bypassed the first layer of protection on the servers, he wouldn't have even seen it on the screen in front of him.

"Come on J, work your magic," he cajoled. JARVIS would be much quicker at this than him right now, especially connected to the suit as he was right then. And… yep, there it went.

"Three minutes to spare; not too shabby," he praised. He gave Natasha a thumb's up and a grin, and dove back into the servers with the new goal of assisting Natasha in her search of the database by stripping the thing of as many lines of security code as he could get his grubby hands into.

"Shit," Natasha suddenly swore, and Tony looked up, a little startled. He'd been in the zone, probably about ten minutes by the looks of things, and had nearly forgotten the other person in the room with him. "Tony, you better get down bottom, Clint says Steve's not answering him."

Well _fuck_, Tony thought, when Natasha of all people sounds worried...

He rammed two USB drives into slots on the servers, disconnected himself and JARVIS from them, and was out the door in under ten seconds flat, ramming his helmet down onto his head and letting the latches catch.

"Clint—Hawkeye, what's his status?" Tony fired off as soon as he shoved open the stairwell door and threw himself down the empty shaft. He had a couple seconds of free fall, which was just enough for him to check his sensors—no sign of the scepter or the Tesseract, damn it—and then Clint was answering him.

"I have zero clue what is wrong, he's just _standing_ there, _staring_ at this… thing, but he seems fine."

"_Seems_ fine?" Tony queried as he powered his thrusters and came to a halt near the bottom before blasting a hole through the door instead of just opening the damn thing.

"I don't know! I have my hands full and can't check!" Clint sounded really distracted.

Luckily, Tony turned the corner and came out into a large, though dark, lab and caught sight of his two teammates before he needed to ask for clarification. Tony quickly scanned the room, but there were only two heat signatures in the room alongside a whole bunch of ones that were definitely on the other side of dead—and those two happened to be his teammates.

Tension eased within him, even if he was still a little freaked out by what was going on with Cap—the man still hadn't moved from the dark corner he was facing, but his body had started this fine trembling that Tony was sure he wouldn't have noticed if he weren't so incredibly focused on the man.

Clint turned towards Tony, and it was only then that he noticed the other man had something bundled in his arms. "Oh thank god you're here, Tony. I can't deal with them both at once and I can't put her down right now either, and you're the Cap-whisperer so please do something," Clint rambled, practically panicking.

It was only then that Tony noticed what Clint was holding.

"Is that a—?"

"Yes, it's a baby, you're so observant!" Clint sniped back, but his words contained no heat. He was just… freaking out a little bit, it seemed. Tony would be too, he was pretty sure.

Tony retracted the faceplate of his helmet and held his hands up in surrender and letting his guard drop just a little. "Okay, sheesh, I am just _really_ surprised." He looked around the dingy, dark, damp, disastrous-looking lab surrounding them. "Definitely not the place you find a _kid_."

"No, but they obviously knew she was here," Clint replied, and kicked the body that was right at his feet none too gently. "Found this douchebag trying to… to…" He fluttered his eyes shut and pulled the child closer to his chest, and Tony noticed for the first time that the body had a _lot_ more arrows sticking out of him than most of Clint's targets ever did. His bow was at his feet, also, and that was the first time Tony had ever seen it treated so poorly. It just wasn't in the guy to mistreat his weapon like that.

Tony took a few steps closer, peering into the child's face from where it was peeking out of the bundle of blankets surrounding her. She was no more than a year old, even Tony could tell that, and she was currently staring up at the two men standing above her with the widest, bluest eyes Tony had ever seen. He knew all babies had blue eyes, but he was still struck by them, and by the shock of black hair curling messily around her face. Her skin was pale, so pale; she probably hadn't seen daylight since she'd been born, or very little of it, at least. And…

"Fucker tried to kill her," Clint grit out and drew his foot back to kick into said asshole's side again, as soon as he saw Tony's eyes catch sight of the slice on the side of her throat. "Got her before he could do much more than press the point in, but she needs medical attention."

He eyed Tony, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "I'll take her. You see what's wrong with Cap." Clint jerked his head in Steve's direction before picking up his bow with one hand and heading towards the stairwell, and Tony was immediately drawn back to the _other_ problem in the room.

Great, as if a kid weren't enough of a problem.

Not that she was a _problem_, nope. Not at all. A surprise, that was for sure. They'd need to find her parents—if she had any left after everyone here had bit the bullet, so to speak—and arrange for care of her, and figure out what she was doing in a hellhole like this in the first place…

That sorta problem.

But, one thing at a time.

Tony walked heavily across the room, electing to take his time to travel the forty feet or so that would take him to the corner of the room Steve was _still_ staring into, taking the time to let his eyes take in Steve's form in the dark tac gear Tony himself had just finished for him last week.

Well. Not that he was _ogling_, he told himself. Just… checking to see how it held up.

Yup. Totally all he was doing.

"Cap?" Tony called out, willing the color in his cheeks back down and focusing once more on the task at hand. The _actual_ task at hand.

Silence.

He was nearly level with him now, and could make out a giant glass case or tube or something on the other side of the blond. He couldn't see much more than that, but he sure as hell could feel it get colder and colder with every step he took—he'd thought it was just the dark dampness of the bottom floor of a missile base in Michigan in the fall, but he realized pretty quickly that the glass he could see was frosted over with ice . "Steve, what's—oh _fuck me_," Tony let slip.

Because what Tony had first thought had held nothing, was actually holding a human being. There was a goddamn _human_ in this cryo-whatever thing, and not even Stark Industries had ever figured that shit out so it's not like he expected to be face to face with a frozen human that looked the next best thing to _alive_.

Tony stepped closer, but before he could retract his glove's armor even a little bit to wipe at the glass and get a better look, Steve spoke, his words barely louder than a whisper and sounding pained—as if his whole soul was grating against the words.

"It's Bucky. It's _Bucky_, Tony." A pause, and then, "How could I let this happen to him?"

* * *

**Note: Thank you and betheflame for the beta on this first chapter!**

**Hey all. :) I've decided to start a new Stuckony fic instead of joining a (R)BB or two this time around! That way I can have time for this, and time for Hanging From a Cross of Iron as well. Since I started my master's history thesis again, I'm not getting as much enjoyment out of Cross, thus me wanting to write something much for... uh, fun, like this. Fun in a 'not having to research things to death' way, not that this will be filled with fluff. ;D Anyway, for those of you waiting for more Cross, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I brainstormed with my new beta, betheflame, and I figured out some of where I was going wrong with that fic, so it's going to be a lot easier going forward. Bad news is that I'm throwing out basically 5k of chapter 17 I already had written. But it was really not working, and now I feel SO much better about things, so I think this will go quicker. I should update about the same... but maybe even quicker, even with the addition of this new fic!**

**With this new fic, it's my hope to update fairly often, but it will be a little irregular to fit around my health. This is not going to be as detailed, not going to be as slow, as Cross, that's for sure. So it's going to be a LOT easier on me. ;)**

**Looking for more Stuckony? Check out my latest, which is complete! Primal as the Sapphire Moon. I also have a rec list of long fics here on my Tumblr (juuls), so check that out too!**

**Authors love kudos and comments! Thank you so much.**


	2. Chapter 2

The cryo-chamber sent chills through Tony.

It wasn't just the fact that the thing was physically cold, no, not at all. It wasn't even close to anything like that at all, actually. Most of what was setting him off was the mere implication of what the thing's existence meant. What it meant to Bucky Barnes, to Steve, to Tony, even… and definitely what it meant for the world.

Nothing good.

Oh sure, the technology—like any… well, _most_—could be used for both good as well as evil, absolutely. Just think of what could be gained once the technology was reverse-engineered. But that? That was a topic for another day, another _month_, even.

What was bugging Tony the most wasn't the science for once. No, what he was stumbling over was more practical—what did it mean for his people that Barnes was alive?

Because he sure as fuck was, there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They hadn't even needed to do a scan of the guy back at the missile base—whoever the hell those people were, whether they were some form of Hydra or not, they had at least been kind enough to include a handy-dandy screen with readouts attached to the cryo-chamber, and those were definitely the signs of someone _living_.

Tony just wasn't entirely sure that he knew who that someone was. He wasn't even sure that Steve knew, either—or, rather, he was afraid for what he suspected the answer to be: that Bucky Barnes, Captain America's sergeant and Steve Rogers' best friend, wasn't the entity playing host beneath that skin.

But it didn't matter, not really. Not to them, and not to Steve.

It was for Steve's sake, as much as for the man Barnes… _was_, that they had loaded the entire unwieldy thing up into the quinjet—neither Tony nor Bruce wanted to mess with it at the base—rigged some sort of power supply to it, and then used the service elevators to bring the entire thing down to Tony's lab once they got back to the Tower.

And there they'd been, in near silence, for the last twenty minutes: six Avengers, an extra freeze-dried nonagenarian, a cold hunk of possibly ground-breaking foreign technology, reams upon reams of stolen—and, frustratingly, mostly encrypted and/or corrupted, from what they could tell—data... and a goddamn baby.

"This is a sitcom waiting to happen, I swear to god, what did I do to deserve this life," Tony muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He yelped as the baby was plunked right into his arms, but wrapped them around her instinctively anyway.

Clint glared at him. "Not take your turn, is what you did," he said snootily, before collapsing dramatically into a puddle of archer on the floor.

Cap didn't even pause—he just walked around the sudden obstacle.

"So what should we call her?" Tony asked into the tense silence as he adjusted his grip, staring down at the little mite. She stared up at him, looking entirely too solemn for what Bruce said was an eight month old, her blue eyes barely moving as they peered into Tony's.

He'd never really had much experience with kids, especially babies, and this was actually the first time he'd ever held one. However, the panic he thought would come never did. Sure, he was a bit worried he'd hurt her, but it wouldn't be because he _dropped_ the baby—he wasn't _that_ much of a klutz.

"Are we sure it's a good idea to name her?" Bruce asked, though his attention was mainly focused on the readouts on his tablet. They'd just finished getting JARVIS to scan the cryo-chamber, and now they were waiting to see what was what before proceeding, before making any further decisions. "It's not like we can keep her, so we shouldn't get attached."

Tony frowned, his brows furrowing, but before he could say anything, Thor spoke up. "It risks fate to be without a name," he said gravely.

"What he said," Clint yawned.

"Well, we should call her _something_, at least," Tony said, rolling his eyes. "It feels weird just calling her 'baby' or 'the kid' in my head."

"Misha," Natasha said immediately, looking over Tony's shoulder and down at the girl. The child didn't once break eye contact with Tony, and he couldn't help but think that was both decidedly _creepy as fuck_ and absolutely adorable all at the same time.

"Isn't that a boy's name?" Clint scrunched his nose.

"Maybe, but it fits, does it not?" Natasha retorted, as if it made all the sense in the world to her.

Tony actually sorta kinda agreed, oddly enough. The kid actually _did_ look like a Misha, whatever the heck _that_ meant. About his state of mind and the kid both.

"Well _sure_—"

"And," Natasha continued smoothly over top of Clint, ignoring his '_hey_!' as if he hadn't spoken at all. "I don't think that we should hand her over just yet. There is…" She hesitated, and everyone turned to look at her—even Steve—because she _rarely_ hesitated like this with her speech.

"Did you find something?" Steve asked sharply, locking his jaw again after the words left his lips, and looking back at the cryo-chamber that held his _best friend who everyone thought was dead_—holy fuck, it was still super surreal, even to Tony, and it hit him anew literally every time he thought about it.

"There isn't much usable data, let alone much of any on her specifically, from that base. But what there is speaks of experimentation." Her voice hardened. "There is something special about little Misha, and I can almost guarantee that whatever it is, they will want to get their hands on her. _Whoever_ they are." _Hydra_, perhaps, was left unsaid. They were all thinking it.

"Then she's safest with us," Clint said. "Because I'm pretty damn sure there's a leak somewhere at SHIELD and I _really_ don't like it."

"It is most distressing," Thor concurred.

Natasha nodded, and glanced at Steve. "Steve?"

"Yes?"

"Are you okay?" she asked, much more gently than Tony had ever heard from her.

"No," the blond replied succinctly.

"About SHIELD, or about…"

"I couldn't give two shits about SHIELD right now," Steve said darkly, taking everyone aback. "But no, no, you're right," he sighed, posture slumping. He ran both hands through his hair. "Right, okay. I'm sorry, I'm not being a very good leader right now."

"It's understandable," Clint mumbled from the ground.

"Absolutely," Bruce agreed.

"One hundred percent," Tony chimed in. "Plus, I can put my big boy pants on for a bit." Steve rolled his eyes at him, but there was a smile there, too, and that's all Tony cared about right then. Well, that and trying to _help_.

"You sure you got some of those around?" Natasha teased.

"Yes, Itsy Bitsy, and I even have a belt to match," he retorted, though fondly. "But okay, really, since this is my house, I officially say that this little lady can stay, so, hey, now you have company, you scary woman you." He continued before she could bite his head off, deliberately avoiding her eyes, though a smirk pulled at his lips for a moment. "JARVIS, please order double of whatever the internet tells you is necessary for the care and nourishment and _not_-accidentally-murdering of children. Use the alias account."

"Sir," the A.I. confirmed.

"Clint and I can get a few essentials until those arrive. No one will be the wiser," Natasha added.

Tony nodded at her, and watched as the tension started to ease from Steve's shoulders. A little, just a little, but it was something. It was better than nothing.

"And let's just be clear—as the one in this room raised entirely by nannies and a long-suffering butler, I have zero clue what to do with human children other than make a robot to care for one, _but_—" He balanced little Misha, because _apparently_ that was what they were going to call her now, with one hand and touched the tip of her nose with a finger on his free hand. "—for this one I am willing to try, because _damn_ she's cute, I have zero idea why but she's grown on me, and we need all hands on deck. And since we aren't sure who to trust—and I agree with you there, _something_ is going down with SHIELD—we'll need to keep this close to the chest. Preferably this close." He demonstrated how close by pulling Misha tighter against his chest, the brilliance of the arc reactor setting her eyes practically to glowing.

"For a little while at least," Natasha agreed. "Then we can control carefully who finds out what and when and how."

"Sure," Tony replied. "And that goes doubly for our, uh, friend right there." He nodded in the direction of Bucky Barnes. "Because, honestly, I'm pretty much five hundred percent sure that Cap here will literally murder people in cold blood if any harm comes to Barnes and _wow_ the lack of rebuttal there is seriously frightening, Steve, but I'm pretty much right there with you don't worry your pretty hiney over—ahem. Yes." He cleared his throat.

"I feel like I've seen him before," Clint muttered, thankfully drawing away the sharp gaze that Steve had set on Tony just seconds previous.

"Because you have," Natasha said simply. "This is the Winter Soldier."

"The fuck?" Clint yelped. He was on his feet nigh instantaneously, looking at the man frozen and suspended in front of them. "Him?"

At the same time, Steve cut in, "Who's the Winter Sol—No, better question is how you know this, Natasha. How do you know my best friend, who was supposed to be _dead_?" Steve didn't have to raise his voice to sound fucking _terrifying_, and Tony determined that now was probably a good time to pass Misha off to Thor, and plant himself in front of the scary man.

"Okay, chill out, Capsicle," he said, raising his eyebrows and his hands both, keeping himself deliberately casual. Sure, he knew that Cap wouldn't _hurt_ him, but he didn't necessarily have assurances that the man wouldn't start some verbal fight with Natasha. "I'm as curious as you how she knows this, so let's ask her _nicely_, yeah?"

There was a long silence between them all, broken only by the ambient noise of Tony's shop and the muted tapping of Bruce's fingers on the StarkPad in his lap. Then Steve met Nat's eyes over Tony's shoulder, his expression softening. "Sorry Natasha. I'm just—" He made an aborted movement with both hands.

"I understand, zvezda moya," Natasha said, as gently as she ever got, and the look on Steve's face softened even further.

_Oh god_, Tony thought. He was so fucked.

To hide _everything_, pretty much, he moved them ahead. "Okay. Great. So. Um. Tell us how you know him, because I sure as hell am curious too." He stepped aside and turned so that he could look at both Natasha and Steve, smiling a little at Thor cooing at Misha, having some success at tickling her feet. "Probably the quick version, though, because even my ineptitude tells me that Misha's going to need some food and some diapers pretty soon."

A shadow seemed to pass behind Natasha's eyes before she began to briefly lay out how she'd come to know the man who had once been known as Bucky Barnes. They'd called him Yasha, or Big Brother, at times, at the school she'd been trained at, though he hadn't ever stayed for long periods of time. One year, he never came, and he didn't come again for as long as Natasha was there. She hadn't even put together that he was the Winter Soldier until she'd seen the cryo-chamber and the read-outs in Russian, but as soon as she did, everything started to fall in place.

"Did he… suffer?" Steve breathed.

"Very likely," Natasha replied bluntly, though not ungently. "From what I know, his existence was not a sound or kind one, but when he performed well, he was well-respected. There are many things attributed to the Ghost over the years, many which could be viewed as amazing, if viewed in the right light." She fingered a scar they'd all seen on her lower abdomen, and Tony narrowed his eyes. Steve hadn't missed the gesture, either, but he seemed more concerned with holding himself together. "When he was with us, he was hardly allowed to be human. But he was kind when he could be. He was treated well, from what I know, though that is all relative to the situation," she added, just a hint wryly, though her eyes were softening at the look on Steve's face as well. He looked, just… _so_ overwhelmed.

It wasn't every day you heard your friend had been reduced to something less than human.

Tony ached to reach out and wrap him in his arms, as he'd only dared do a few times when he _wasn't_ completely fuzzed over with sleep, but now was absolutely not the right time. Or, rather, it was, and he was just too much of a coward to do so in front of everyone else.

Probably that.

"I don't know much more, Steve, but I will find out what I can. Within SHIELD and without. We _will_ find out what happened to him, I promise that, zvezda moya."

"Me too," Tony said. "However I can help, you know you have my support."

Tony tried not to feel breathless at the smile Steve sent his way. Tried _very hard_.

"But," Natasha said, drawing out the word a little until they were all looking at them. "I believe that the best opportunity to know what happened is by asking the man himself."

Steve looked over his shoulder, his eyes obviously tracing over the muted outline of the man who'd been by his side for over a decade and a half, never straying. His eyes, when he turned back to the team, were filled with hope and fear both in equal measures, and he wasn't even trying to hide it. He probably wasn't even able to, truly.

"You mean?" he breathed.

Natasha nodded. "I believe we should wake him, as long as Bruce and JARVIS' readings suggest that it's safe.

Bruce glanced at them, his glasses slipping down his nose. "I mean—sure, I guess. His readings are stable, but it's pretty ethically questionable to leave him like this." His mouth twisted and he looked into the middle distance a little before his eyes focused again. "There's plenty we don't know, about how he'll react, or what his state of mind will be, but between us all, I think we can, uh… well, I think we can figure out how to handle…" He trailed off.

"How to handle him," Steve said flatly.

"It'll be fine," Tony cut in, but Steve talked over him.

"No, Bruce is right," Steve said, and the others nodded along. "We need to be prepared for everything, and that means that we need to be prepared in case he… in case he wants to hurt us."

Silence, until Clint spoke up, for some reason _still_ lying on the ground. "You gotta be willing to let us help handle him in that case, Cap. As in, you should probably step aside and let Thor or Tony deal with him—because, shit, the stories I've heard…"

Distress flooded Steve's face, and Clint quickly sat up and reassured their leader, "Dude, I'm sure it's going to be fine. But we don't want you hurt if he doesn't recognize you and you freeze or try to, I dunno, appeal to his better side or something stupid like I can only imagine you would do. No offense," he tacked on. Barely.

Steve didn't even notice. He was too lost in contemplation. But after a long pause, he looked up and nodded. "I'll try. I want what's best for him, and we work best together, right?" He caught their eyes, one by one, and they all nodded or murmured their agreement. Steve ground his teeth together, but looked a lot calmer as he added, "I trust you not to hurt him—but hopefully it doesn't come to that. First, though, we have to figure out how to get him out of that… _thing_."

"That's the spirit," Tony said with only a hint of forced cheer. He clapped his hands together. "Sure. Well, it can't be that hard! They thawed you out and you turned out just fine. I think." Tony winked at Steve before turning his attention away again. "Okay, well, we can… Bruce, how about we use the Hulk room? You've never really had to use it, right?"

"Right," Bruce agreed.

"And if need be, we can take Barnes out safely so you can do your thing. We can figure that out later, though. I think…" Tony looked at Steve, looked at everyone, looked at little Misha who had hold of one of Thor's new braids, and then looked over at the cryo-chamber again. "Well, what are we waiting for?" Tony grinned, feeling just this edge of manic, and starting to be taken over by excitement and adrenaline. "Let's do this. Chop chop!" he added unnecessarily, as everyone was already on the move, calling out and claiming tasks that needed doing so everything was covered.

Tony smiled at Steve for a long moment, everyone else whirling away around them, before striding off to help Bruce and JARVIS figure out the best way to get Barnes to the Hulk room and begin the defrosting.

The look, the _smile_, on Steve's face was worth every last bit of trouble they were probably running right into. All that and more.


End file.
